


Five Times Kujen Murdered Jedao and One Time He Forgot

by SathInflection



Category: Machineries of Empire Series - Yoon Ha Lee
Genre: At least 57 Jedaos, Crack, Geese, Horror, Humor, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mind Manipulation, Offscreen green onion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-24
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2019-01-05 01:49:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12180552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SathInflection/pseuds/SathInflection
Summary: Letting Jedao out of the black cradle isn't always a snap.





	Five Times Kujen Murdered Jedao and One Time He Forgot

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eehn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eehn/gifts).



The first time it happened, it was an accident. And the next, and the third, the fourth, the fifth, but not the sixth. That was on purpose. Kujen was still working out some of the details of modifying bodies, though he wasn’t sure why he bothered with Jedao’s. Jedao 27 had definitely been better off dead, what with the extra eyes.

Jedao 8 perished in a voidmoth. Kujen was just running out to do a quick set of errands—picking up some candy for his anchor and some new vivisection tools developed by the Vidona—and he’d forgotten to turn on the air conditioning. The Vidona haggled, the candy was out of stock, and Kujen spent three hours doing what he’d expected to do in thirty minutes. Immortality meant that he’d only barely been annoyed, but it was a fatal event for Jedao. Kujen was even a little embarrassed when he went back into the voidmoth and saw Jedao stretched out on the floor.

“Why didn’t you just turn on the air conditioning?” Kujen asked the corpse. “Oh. The death wish.”

Jedao 28 had the appropriate number of eyes and was pleasingly taller than Jedao 1. Kujen treated him delicately, because he suspected Jedao 29 wouldn’t be as satisfactory in bed. He went to check on Jedao’s progress with Calendrical Goose Simulator, his anchor walking with his usually quiet steps. This was a poor choice for Jedao’s assassin reflexes. Kujen found out that it was possible to kill someone with a porcelain soup spoon.

“I’m not sorry,” Jedao said, after Kujen returned in a new anchor.

“Thank you for the learning experience,” Kujen replied, before flooding Jedao’s bedroom with a fairly benign poison gas.

The demise of Jedao 31 was quite funny. Kujen had secured the wet bar at his secret fortress with a simple Captcha system to prevent any wandering Esfarels from breaking the sink. The security feed revealed Kujen’s mistake.

WET BAR CAPTCHA: Out of the numbers 54, eighty-eight, 69, thirty, which is the highest number?

JEDAO: That’s easy. 69!

Kujen returned to the scene of Jedao sprawled dead over the wet bar, destroyed by the needlessly aggressive defense system.

Jedao 43 passed on after beating Kujen at jeng-zai. Since Kujen had guests visiting for dinner, he stuffed Jedao behind a curtain and left it to his anchor to entertain the current false hexarch. Jedao fell over halfway into the meal, shocking the guests and spoiling an excellent pastry arrangement.

“You are so embarrassing,” Kujen hissed. “Why are you always embarrassing me?”

The false hexarch then had to join Jedao behind the curtain, unfortunately.

Kujen was irritated when Shuos Mikodez brought up the high expiration rate of Jedaos. “Really, Kujen, he’s not a goldfish. How can you keep killing him?” he asked.

“That’s a lot coming from someone who’s never raised anything more complex than a green onion.”

“I could manage a cat if I wanted to.”

“Jedao isn’t a cat! He’s not a pet at all. He’s got a mind of his own,” Kujen replied.

That was when he realized he had done worse than forgetting Jedao in a hot voidmoth. Kujen had forgotten about Jedao entirely, assuming he must have somehow died, but Jedao was very much alive.

Kujen found out that Jedao had retired to an idyllic pastoral planet after winning big at a casino. Attracted by the sound of his geese trying to chase Kujen off the farm, Jedao 56 leaned in the doorway and frowned at Kujen.

“I thought you’d never get here,” Jedao said. “Hurry up and shoot me; I have gray hair and I don’t like it at all.”

“I should let you die of old age.”

Jedao shrugged. “I think that would count as a win for me.”

Kujen thought of the improvements he would make on Jedao 57, and fired.


End file.
